Creation Revealed In Six Days

Those who recall Air-Commodore P. J. Wiseman’s book, New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis1 in which he explained his views about the making of the Book of Genesis, will be interested in his latest publication, which is an enquiry into the precise meaning of the first chapter of the Bible.2 It might have been thought that all possible explanations of the Creation narrative had been canvassed by now, but the Air-Commodore presents a new way of looking at the subject, and what is more, makes at least as good a case for it as has been made for any of the others.

First, he exposes the weaknesses of existing theories. The opinion that each of the days was a geologic period of immense duration is rejected because of the difficulty of considering the present seventh day period as “hallowed” or “sanctified,” or of conceiving of God as resting for thousands of years. The occurrence of the expression “evening and morning is also urged against this view. The further suggestion that there were two creations, separated by an immense period during which the earth became “without form and void,” and that the second creation was a re-creation in six days does not find favour because it does not account for “evenings and mornings.” “Are we to suppose,” asks the writer, “that God re-created the earth and all life upon it in six ordinary days, and then only during the daylight hours of those six days?”

Air-Commodore Wiseman also points out that science has no knowledge of the alleged universal destruction of all marine, animal and human life, or of an infinitely long period when, after forms of life had already existed on the earth, there was left no kind of life whatever on it. Opinions that the narrator of Genesis had visions of each stage of the creation on each of the six days; that the record is poetry; that the writer, writing long afterwards, adopted the idea of the Jewish week and sabbath as a convenient framework for his story; or that the record is merely myth or legend and not historical, are all rejected for what seem to be sound reasons.

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Author: F. Whiteley and L. Reid

Keywords: day, six days of creation, creation, beginning, god created, beginning god created, created heavens and earth, young earth, creationism, creation week, let there be light, creation science, Genesis

Bible reference(s): Gen 1, Gen 2:1-4

Source: F. Whiteley, “Creation Revealed In Six Days,” The Testimony, Vol. 18, No. 213, September 1948, pp. 312-3, L. Reid, “Air Commodore Wiseman and Genesis,” The Testimony, Vol. 19, Nos. 218-9, February/March 1949, pp. 23-5, 50-2.

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